Rafaela Andrade loved the solitude of Paradise and often filled it with the sounds of her wonderful voice — mostly Mexican folk songs from her childhood, favorites by Cole Porter and some of the oldies.

She didn’t perform, but one could not forget her singing, said daughter Susan Andrade, who now lives in San Jose with her older sister Mary.

“I remember the way she raised us, her singing. And she put tomato sauce on everything she cooked,” Susan Andrade said.

Somehow, every combination seemed to taste good. “She knew how to use it,” Andrade added.

Rafaela Andrade died in Paradise at age 84.

Rafaela, who also went by Lita, was born in Mexico in 1934 and came to the United States with her mother as a young child. Her parents separated when she was young.

She met her husband John at a dance in the 1950s. John, a contractor, built homes in Paradise, Magalia and Gilroy. Rafaela kept busy as his bookkeeper. They had two daughters, Susan and Mary.

Rafaela Andrade was outgoing, social and easy to talk to, though she was known to occasionally have a temper. But age seemed to mellow that intensity, her daughter said.

Rafaela and John were both members of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Paradise. They came to the town together in 1975 and lived in a spacious, airy home surrounded by trees on a two-acre lot.

It was the last home that John built before he died in 2009.

“She loved Paradise. It was nice and quiet, there weren’t heavy highways and people were friendly,” Susan Andrade said.

Thy Vo covers government in Santa Clara County and the city of Santa Clara for The Mercury News. She's a Southern California native and started her journalism career watchdogging local government in Orange County, California for the nonprofit news website Voice of OC.